Many mouths making conversation, with speech bubbles in red and blue.
Illustration by Laurène Boglio

Neural recordings in freely moving mice; MBD5 variant

Researchers took to social media to discuss a new tool for recording brain activity in freely moving mice and a study linking a mutation in the gene MBD5 to epilepsy and intellectual disability. That and more in this week’s Community Newsletter.

Jakob Voigts of the Janelia Research Campus shared his preprint, “A unified open-source platform for multimodal neural recording and perturbation during naturalistic behavior,” posted on bioRxiv 1 September.

Guido Meijer of Radboud Universiteit, Ranier Gutiérrez of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, and Michael Goard of the University of California, Santa Barbara, commented on Voigts’ preprint.

Catarina Seabra of the University of Coimbra shared her study, “A novel genetic variant in MBD5 associated with severe epilepsy and intellectual disability: Potential implications on neural primary cilia,” published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences 9 August. Spectrum covered Seabra’s work on MBD5 earlier this year.

Vicki Gibbs of Autism Spectrum Australia shared the editorial, “The old and the new way of understanding autistic lives: Reflections on the life of Donald Triplett, the first person diagnosed as autistic,” published in Autism 4 September. Spectrum covered Triplett’s passing in June.

Bhismadev Chakrabarti of the University of Reading shared his team’s study, “Greater interpersonal distance in adults with autism,” published in Autism Research 1 September.

Mark Zylka of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Amar Sahay of Harvard University commented on the study, “AAV-based in vivo gene therapy for neurological disorders,” published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 1 September.

Felix Leroy of Universidad Miguel Hernández described his team’s study, “Corticotropin-releasing hormone signaling from prefrontal cortex to lateral septum suppresses interaction with familiar mice,” published in Cell 4 September.

Daniel Woike of the University Medical Center Hamburg, Eppendorf shared his study, “The SHANK/ProSAP N-terminal (SPN) domain of SHANK3 regulates targeting to postsynaptic sites and postsynaptic signaling,” published in Molecular Neurobiology 1 September.

Joseph LeDoux of New York University posted an announcement.

Jill Silverman of the University of California, Davis shared the article, “Trials test utility of EEG biomarkers for autism-related conditions,” published in Spectrum 31 August.

Jennifer Lawlor of the University of Kansas commented on the article, “Scammers threaten quality of research survey data,” published in Spectrum 24 August.

That’s it for this week’s Community Newsletter! If you have any suggestions for interesting social posts you saw in the autism research sphere, feel free to send an email to [email protected].

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